Rouchon Industries Inc., dba Swiftech, is reportedly bringing to market a custom water block for AMD's RX 480. According to reddit user CBwardog, who spoke with a company representative, the water block is expected to come in an Acetal + Nickel package, bearing a price-tag of $99.95. No official announcement from Swiftech at this time, though it is expected that the water block will become available for sale to end-users worldwide through the usual channels in a mere three weeks.

On the heels of the recent Gen-Z interconnect announcement, an aggregate of some of the most recognizable names in the tech industry have once again banded together. This time, it's an effort towards the implementation of a fast, coherent and widely compatible interconnect technology that will pave the way towards tighter integration of ever-more heterogeneous systems.

Technology leaders AMD, Dell EMC, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Mellanox Technologies, Micron, NVIDIA and Xilinx announced the new open standard to appropriate fanfare, considering the promises of an up-to 10x performance uplift in datacenter server environments, thus accelerating big-data, machine learning, analytics, and other emerging workloads. The interconnect promises to provide a high-speed pathway towards tighter integration between different types of technology currently making up the heterogeneous server computing's needs, ranging through fixed-purpose accelerators, current and future system memory subsistems, and coherent storage and network controllers.

In another business-deal-gone-right for Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in chinese soil, the company is now going to provide China's Alibaba giant with server chips with which to power the company's cloud vision. Whilst Alibaba is most commonly known due to its e-commerce activities (through the Aliexpress and Taobao brands), the chinese company is diversifying, even going so far as entering the entertainment space. Now, Alibaba is bidding to carve itself an even larger piece of the cloud market from the likes of Microsoft's Azure and Amazon's Web Services.

The deal was announced this Friday at the Alibaba Computing Conference by Lisa Su (AMD's CEO) and Simon Hu (president of Alibaba Cloud, the chinese giant's cloud computing arm). Through it, AMD will see its Radeon Pro chips supporting and expanding upon the increasingly-in-demand cloud computing capabilities of the chinese company, which already powers around 35% of China's websites.

AMD today released the WHQL-signed variants of the Radeon Software Crimson Edition version 16.10.1 drivers, which it released earlier this month. Besides optimization for "Gears of War 4" and "Mafia III," and CrossFire profiles for "Shadow Warrior 2," these drivers come with support for the Oculus Asynchronous Spacewarp feature on graphics cards based on the "Polaris 10" silicon (Radeon RX 480, RX 470). Grab the drivers from the links below.

AMD defines Asynchronous Spacewarp as the following.

ASW compares previously rendered frames, detects the motion between them, and extrapolates the position of scene components to create a new synthetic frame. Using this technology, synthetic frames will accurately approximate the fully-rendered frames they're designed to replace.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.10.1 WHQL for Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 32-bit | Windows 8.1 64-bit | Windows 8.1 32-bit | Windows 7 64-bit | Windows 7 32-bit

According to TweakTown, AMD may be preparing to bring the fight to the as-of-yet unannounced GTX 1050 Ti with a $10 price-drop on their 1080p price-performance king RX 470 from the current $179, bringing the price down to $169. NVIDIA is purportedly planning to bring the GTX 1050 Ti to market at the $149 price point, with a rated TDP of only 75 W and apparently no need for additional power connectors (at least on reference designs). However, faced with a measly $20 difference from the supposedly higher-performing RX 470 - which could sometimes be up to 30% faster - the battle for the $150 bracket might prove to be an uphill battle for the green camp.

Add to that the latest updates unveiled by Oculus on Oculus Connect 3, with the RX 470 being stamped with the VR-ready approval, as well as the greater availability and lower price of FreeSync monitors (sometimes with as much as four times the number of FreeSync offers versus G-Sync ones), and it really does seem that AMD is poised to offer the best value in its price bracket. Of course, things get muddier if you take into account the current pricing landscape for graphics cards from either manufacturer (where most models are selling upwards of their MSRP).

In what promises to be AMD's most ambitious (and lucrative) semi-custom hardware deal to date, the company partnered with CoreAVI, a leading manufacturer of commercial jet avionics, to develop high-performance cockpit display modules that perform on-the-fly terrain mapping. The company is designing special variants of its Radeon embedded GPUs and APUs (as in accelerated processing units, not auxiliary power); which drive high-resolution cockpit displays with reliable levels of performance.

The company is tapping into its most proven GPU IP and the ubiquitous x86 CPU architecture to drive PFD (primary flight display) modules. AMD hardware's surplus-to-requirement processing power comes in handy in accelerating terrain mapping software on-the-fly. On the software side of things, AMD is tapping into open industry standards such as OpenGL, custom-built for mission-critical (safety-critical) applications. AMD isn't new to the CoreAVI product stack. The company has been supplying extended temperature-range variants of its Radeon embedded GPUs to the company for some time now.A video presentation follows.

A group of leading technology companies today announced the Gen-Z Consortium, an industry alliance working to create and commercialize a new scalable computing interconnect and protocol. This flexible, high-performance memory semantic fabric provides a peer-to-peer interconnect that easily accesses large volumes of data while lowering costs and avoiding today's bottlenecks. The alliance members include AMD, ARM, Cavium Inc., Cray, Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Huawei, IBM, IDT, Lenovo, Mellanox Technologies, Micron, Microsemi, Red Hat, Samsung, Seagate, SK hynix, Western Digital Corporation, and Xilinx.

Modern computer systems have been built around the assumption that storage is slow, persistent and reliable, while data in memory is fast but volatile. As new storage class memory technologies emerge that drive the convergence of storage and memory attributes, the programmatic and architectural assumptions that have worked in the past are no longer optimal. The challenges associated with explosive data growth, real-time application demands, the emergence of low latency storage class memory, and demand for rack scale resource pools require a new approach to data access.

Thanks to AMD's incorporation of an ARM-based "AMD Secure Processor" in their upcoming ZEN micro-architecture, the company is poised to offer something competitor Intel's microprocessors yet don't: memory encryption. This processor, and its underlying technologies, could prove to be a stepping-stone for AMD towards regaining lost server market share. Essentially, because in a market ever more steered by cloud computing considerations, it allows for the client's data to be encrypted at every moment of the work chain. Assuming all works as intended, for the first time not even cloud providers, with either hypervisor-level privileges or even physical access to the servers, will be able to carry out any malicious actions against their clients.

One only has to consider the writing on the wall: Morgan Stanley predicts that by 2018, 30% of Microsoft's revenue will stem from its cloud services; Amazon Web Services (AWS) generated $7.88B in revenue on Q4 2015, up 69% over 2014; and worldwide spending on public cloud services by itself will grow from $70B in 2015 to an estimated $141B in 2019. Cloud computing is here to stay, and with security being as important as it is for some businesses, this is an important area of investment for AMD. This "AMD Secure Processor" will work on essentially two fronts: SME (Secure Memory Encryption) and SEV (Secure Encrypted Virtualization), backed by an hardware-based SHA (Secure Hash Algorithm).

HP Inc. today unveiled its latest generation premium consumer PC line-up for the 2016 holidays. The next generation portfolio features a thinner and lighter convertible with better battery life for portability and a beautifully designed all-in-one to bring amazing sound experiences into the home.

"Premium customers have high expectations around device performance and quality for consuming media and productivity whether at home, work or on the go," said Kevin Frost, vice president and general manager, consumer personal systems, HP Inc. "We are strengthening our leadership in premium with our redesigned PC portfolio to deliver big power in thin and light designs to be even more portable and revolutionize our all-in-one to bring amazing sound into the home."

AMD, CyberPowerPC, and Oculus VR announced a breakthrough Oculus VR-ready gaming desktop priced at just US $499. At the beginning of 2016, you needed to spend a minimum of $949 to build a desktop that meets Oculus VR minimum requirements. Under its hood, is an AMD FX-4350 quad-core processor, Radeon RX 470 4 GB graphics card, 8 GB of dual-channel memory, 1 TB of HDD storage, and a DVD drive. The desktop also includes a keyboard and mouse. The only other piece of hardware you need to spend on is the Oculus Rift HMD itself.

CyberPowerPC is also selling a slightly more premium variant in the Gamer Xtreme VR desktop, priced at just $699. For $200 more, you get an Intel Core i5 "Skylake" quad-core processor, Radeon RX 480 8 GB graphics, pre-installed Windows 10, and WiFi WLAN adapter, besides all that you get with the $499 variant.

AMD today released its latest version of its Radeon Software Crimson Edition drivers. Version 16.10.1 comes with optimization for "Gears of War 4" and "Mafia III." The drivers also add CrossFire support for "Shadow Warrior 2." The drivers also correct various game-specific bugs, including the stutter and crash affecting CrossFire systems on "Deus Ex: Mankind Divided," FPS drops with "The Crew," surface flickers for CrossFire systems in "Battlefield 1," and CrossFire/FreeSync users noticing flickering on "Paragon." A Radeon WattMan bug that prevents it from applying its settings, was also fixed.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.10.1 for Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 32-bit | Windows 8.1 64-bit | Windows 8.1 32-bit | Windows 7 64-bit | Windows 7 32-bit

AMD at the Canalys Channels Forum announced the first PCs featuring 7th Generation AMD PRO APUs (formerly codenamed "Bristol Ridge PRO"). Built for business, AMD PRO APUs deliver increased computing and graphics performance, improved energy efficiency, while providing a secure and stable platform to protect customers' IT investments.

"In the past two years we made incredible progresses in the commercial client segment. Since its inception in mid-2014, AMD PRO processor unit shipments increased more than 45 percent enabling businesses all over the world to simplify IT with secure, high performance, reliable solutions" said Jim Anderson, senior vice president and general manager, Computing and Graphics Business, AMD. "We are thrilled to have PC market leaders like HP and Lenovo expanding their use of AMD technology in their business client portfolios."

AMD is reportedly "aggressively clearing" its inventories of current-generation processors, such products in the AM3+ and FM2+ packages; to make room for next-generation processors based on the "ZEN" architecture, and new 7th generation A-series "Bristol Ridge" APUs, both of which are built in the new socket AM4 package. You should be able to find AMD FX CPUs at attractive prices, so current 4-core and 6-core users could be lured to upgrade to faster 8-core chips, including those featuring the company's Wraith silent CPU cooler.

Taiwan industry observer DigiTimes reports that AMD will launch its next-generation "ZEN" processors, and motherboards based on the high-end X370 chipset, alongside the 2017 International CES expo, in early January. 2017 promises to be a big year for the company as it's not only attempting to regain competitiveness in the performance desktop CPU space, but also high-end graphics, with its Radeon "VEGA" family.

NVIDIA could be close to scoring design wins with Apple, for its MacBook, iMac, and Mac Pro families. This came to light in a job posting at NVIDIA, which calls for applicants to "help produce the next revolutionary Apple products." Although Apple has offered options of both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs on its Mac products in the past, the company hasn't offered NVIDIA GPUs for several generations now, with AMD Radeon being the only discrete GPU choice for MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac Pro products, with the only other choices being integrated GPUs by Intel.

Here are some of the first pictures of a socket AM4 motherboard by GIGABYTE. Positioned as an entry-mainstream offering by the company to launch with AMD's 7th generation A-series "Bristol Ridge" APUs, while being ready for upcoming "ZEN" based CPUs and APUs, this board appears to be based on AMD B350 chipset, the company's mid-tier socket AM4 chipset alongside the entry-level A320 and enthusiast-segment X370. This board appears to feature a rectangular CPU cooler retention-module like older AMD sockets. Could the "square" bolt-type RM we spotted on OEM boards, as well as AMD's own platform demonstrator board not make it to the DIY segment?

This unnamed (label not clearly pictured) motherboard is built in the micro-ATX form-factor, drawing power from 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors. It uses a 7-phase CPU VRM. AMD appears to have introduced new voltage domains with AM4, probably because these are full-fledged SoCs, with core-logic completely integrated. The board features four DDR4 DIMM slots, and PCI-Express gen 3.0 slots. The B350 chipset wires to the SoC over PCI-Express gen 3.0, and puts out additional downstream general-purpose PCIe gen 3.0 lanes, besides additional SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.1 ports.

AMD announced the AMD Embedded Radeon E9260 and E9550 graphics processing units (GPUs), the industry's first discrete embedded graphics cards leveraging the new AMD Polaris architecture. The cards are ideal for applications requiring rich multimedia and 4K video in power-constrained embedded environments. Use cases include immersive casino gaming, digital signage, 4K teleconferencing and interactive digital whiteboards, enhanced medical imaging for clinical diagnoses, and transportation instrumentation.

The Polaris GPU architecture leverages an optimized 14nm FinFET process designed to deliver a dramatic performance-per-watt gain over previous generations of embedded GPU architecture. Providing up to 5.8 TFLOPS performance in a sub-95W TDP power profile, the new embedded GPUs offer advanced 4K encode/decode multimedia processing capabilities and support for up to six displays on the E9550.

AMD Wednesday released the latest version of Radeon Software Crimson Edition. Version 16.9.2 (beta). These drivers come with day-one optimization for "Forza Horizon 3," the latest addition to Microsoft's smash-hit race sim. The drivers also lack the AMD Gaming app by Raptr, the app that started out at AMD's equivalent to NVIDIA GeForce Experience. This move shaves the installer size by about 35 MB.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.9.2 for Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 32-bit | Windows 8.1 64-bit | Windows 8.1 32-bit | Windows 7 64-bit | Windows 7 32-bit

AMD is giving away game codes to "Deus Ex: Mankind Divided," with select AMD FX desktop processors. Game-codes will be included with the AMD FX-8370 with Wraith, FX-8370 (standard), FX-8350 with Wraith, FX-8350 Black Edition, FX-8320E, FX-8320, FX-8300, FX-6350 with Wraith, FX-6350, and FX-6300. With the game code to a recently launched AAA game title added, you can imagine just how the value-proposition of parts such as the $99 FX-6300 is enhanced. The giveaway is limited to select retailers, AMD will update us on more participating retailers shortly. Newegg is handling the promotion in the US.

AMD CTO, speaking at an investors event organized by Deutsche Bank, recently announced that the company's next-generation "Vega" GPUs, its first high-end parts in close to two years, will be launched in the first half of 2017. AMD is said to have made significant performance/Watt refinements with Vega, over its current "Polaris" architecture. VideoCardz posted probable specs of three parts based on the architecture.

AMD will begin the "Vega" architecture lineup with the Vega 10, an upper-performance segment part designed to disrupt NVIDIA's high-end lineup, with a performance positioning somewhere between the GP104 and GP102. This chip is expected to be endowed with 4,096 stream processors, with up to 24 TFLOP/s 16-bit (half-precision) floating point performance. It will feature 8-16 GB of HBM2 memory with up to 512 GB/s memory bandwidth. AMD is looking at typical board power (TBP) ratings around 225W.

Here is perhaps the first picture of a socket AM4 motherboard up close. The HP "Willow" is a micro-ATX motherboard custom-designed by the company to deploy on several of its upcoming desktop PC models, offered initially with AMD A-series "Bristol Ridge" socket AM4 APUs. Since this is custom-built for desktops that will probably be sold under $500, the board is built to a cost. The board features AMD A320 chipset.

The picture reveals socket AM4 to have extremely fine pins, and feature a square bolt-type cooler retention mechanism similar to that of contemporary Intel sockets. It does away with the rectangular layout. The advantage of a square layout is that it allows you to orient your cooler in any direction. Since the core-logic is moved to the APU/CPU package, the remaining rump of what AMD refers to as "chipset," is just a PCIe multi-function chip that puts out additional SATA and USB ports. With its TDP under 5W, this chip can make do without a heatsink. Other noteworthy features include two DDR4 DIMM slots, a PCIe gen 3.0 x16 slot, a short M.2 slot, a couple of SATA 6 Gb/s ports, and basic connectivity.

AMD will follow up its Q1-2017 launch of socket AM4 desktop processors and APUs based on the "ZEN" microarchitecture, with single-chip mobile processors and APUs in the following quarter, according to an Expreview report. These solutions could take advantage of the fact that "ZEN" CPUs and APUs completely integrate platform core-logic (chipsets), even though on the desktop platform, AMD is launching the A320, B350, and X370 chipsets to expand connectivity given out by the SoCs.

With requirements for fewer M.2, SATA, and USB 3.0 ports on mobile platforms such as notebooks, designs that completely do away with the chipset should theoretically be possible, and the company could use this to score design wins. Intel currently offers CPU and PCH on single packages, as multi-chip modules (MCMs).

The global graphics processing unit (GPU) market 2016-2020 report says the increasing adoption of integrated GPUs over discrete GPUs is one of the major trends witnessed in the global GPU market. Currently, there is increasing adoption of integrated GPUs, which are used in notebooks, desktops, and workstations across the globe.

This increasing adoption is mainly attributed to the growing need of enhanced visual content by end-consumers. In addition, end-consumers are demanding high memory graphics in their systems. In order to meet such demands, graphic processor vendors are providing high graphics through integrated GPUs. Thus, the increasing adoption of integrated GPUs over discrete GPUs is one of major trends that is propelling the growth of the market. Complete report on graphics processing unit market spread across 58 pages, analyzing major companies and providing 30 data exhibits is now available here.

Vulkan, the new-generation cross-platform 3D graphics API governed by the people behind OpenGL, the Khronos Group, is gaining in relevance, with Google making it the primary 3D graphics API for Android. AMD said that it's actively promoting the API. Responding to a question by TechPowerUp in its recent Radeon Technology Group (RTG) first anniversary presser, its chief Raja Koduri agreed that the company is actively working with developers to add Vulkan to their productions, and optimize them for Radeon GPUs. This, we believe, could be due to one of many strategic reasons.

First, Vulkan works inherently better on AMD Graphics CoreNext GPU architecture because it's been largely derived from Mantle, a now defunct 3D graphics API by AMD that brings a lot of "close-to-metal" API features that make game consoles more performance-efficient, over to the PC ecosystem. The proof of this pudding is the AAA title and 2016 reboot of the iconic first-person shooter "Doom," in which Radeon GPUs get significant performance boosts switching from the default OpenGL renderer to Vulkan. These boosts aren't as pronounced on NVIDIA GPUs.

LG Electronics unveiled the 24UD58-B, its entry-level 24-inch 4K Ultra HD monitor, which could be priced around the $300 mark. Its specifications are anything but "entry-level," with an IPS panel that puts out 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160 pixels) at 60 Hz, with 10-bit color support (1.07 billion colors), active blue light reduction, 5 ms response time, 250 cd/m² maximum brightness, 178°/178° viewing angles, and dynamic mega-contrast ratio. On the input side of things, the monitor supports AMD FreeSync technology, HDMI 2.0, and DisplayPort 1.2a.

AMD is preparing a "Battlefield 1" promotion for its Radeon RX 480 graphics cards. Starting today, RX 480 purchases in select markets are eligible to receive Origin codes that upgrade your "Battlefield 1" Standard Edition purchase to the Early Enlister Deluxe Edition. As an Early Enlister, you get to play the game a few days ahead of the October 21 launch. The way this code works is that you add BF1 Early Enlister Deluxe Edition to card in the Origin store, and enter the code as a "promo code" during checkout. Its final price is reduced to that of the Standard Edition. If redeemed after launch, you get the Digital Deluxe Edition at the price of the Standard Edition.